Faint Fragrance
by CookieDecor22
Summary: Half a regular school day to attend, two major lab reports, and a week load of homework. Not exactly how Shun wants to spend of his week off, but a certain faint fragrance and a certain close friend who moved away but came back can probably relive that stress of his.


**2013-10-14, 13:14**

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**Happy Thanksgiving! Or more specifically, Canadian Thanksgiving. Today's the third day of my nine day break since my school has the whole week off, so I wrote a oneshot. Supposed to be working on this week's homework, but I have the whole _week_ to do it. But cramming everything together means for free time in the end.**

**I don't usually do these, but a few of my relatives came over and are spending the week here. That's a good thing, right? I hope so****. Just haven't seen them in a while**. For my parents, the in-laws issue is a different story. I recently travelled to a few places over the summer and felt nostalgic just thinking of all those places.

**This is mainly inspired by Perfume's song Faint Fragrance ['Kasuka na Kaori'], I added some details of my daily life in here, but it doesn't matter, and neither does the fact that it takes place in Canada. ****I'm going to be technical and say there's a positive parabolic feel to this oneshot. If you understand it, then great! If you don't, then, well...read and see!**

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**Faint Fragrance**

"I'm back."

No response.

_Oh right. I live by myself now._

Shun thew his briefcase on the sofa of his apartment and plunged into his brown recliner seat. Although it was absurd to have classes and two major lab experiments on Thanksgiving Day, Shun was grateful that school today was cut to only half as long. His professors, however, literally crammed an entire's week of lessons in to half a day so students knew how to do this week's homework. That didn't help Shun at all since he also had to write two long, detailed lab reports. Plus, he came back from three hours of part time work at Bayview Public Library.

He closed his eyes and titled his head back, resting for few minutes that soon became an hour. Shun wanted to forget about his college classes, his part time job, and basically his stressful life in general. He took a nap to catch up on the hours of sleep loss in his third year of college.

Until he caught a faint scent.

_What's that?_

Shun, still with his eyes closed, waited for a moment for the scent to be more concentrated. The sweet aroma of cranberry sauce travelled around the living room, followed by cooked chicken and mashed potatoes. The smells made him feel hungry, so Shun woke up and opened his eyes but was blinded by a pair of hands over his eyes. "What the hell?! Who is this?!"

"Take a guess."

All of a sudden, he stopped moving and frowned in thought. "Alice, I get it. Enough with your guessing game." Shun pulled her hands off his face and got up from his seat. "I didn't expect you to make a surprise visit. How and when did you get inside?"

"I still have a copy of your apartment key." Alice unzipped her jacket and showed Shun the dull brass key that hung around her neck on a lavender piece of ribbon. "You gave it to me as a goodbye gift, remember? I came in about an hour after you left to class."

Shun chuckled and rubbed his head. "It's a while since you left for that job in New York. What break are you on?"

Alice giggled as well. "It has been a while. Our department of the laboratory is off today for Columbus Day, so it's a three day weekend. I brought a turkey with me and just put it in the oven." She dragged Shun by his hands over to the kitchen. "Do you have company over tonight?"

"None. Runo invited the others and I over to her parents' place for a dinner together, but I have two lab huge lab reports to write and other stuff planned for the week. We have the whole week off, by the way. Too bad you can't stay any longer."

"Don't feel upset. At least I'm here. That train ride was so long and tedious." The oven made a **ding!** sound, and Alice grabbed a mitten and ran over. "I also made pumpkin pie in the other oven. Grab some plates and forks, please."

Shun looked in his cabinets and grabbed two plates, two forks, a pie cutter, and some napkins to set the table. "Haven't eaten your cooking in a long time either. I wish you could mail packages of your food over."

"And waste so much money on stamps and risking the chance of receiving spoil food? I don't think so." She placed the pie on the table and closed the oven. "How's your third year of college doing? You still aiming for a master's degree?"

Shun shook his head. "No way. After getting my bachelor's degree, I'm getting out of there. What about you? How's your job holding out?"

"All I do is extract scents and flavors from flowers and fruits, but it makes sense since it's only an apprenticeship." She tilted her head to Shun's uneasy face. "What's wrong?"

"You're already out of college with a **real **steady-paying job while I still have to endure two more years and work part time."

Alice smiled and held Shun's left hand. "That's **my **decision. Don't blame yourself. You even supported my decision to take that job, didn't you? Shun, think for yourself for once. I don't come back to visit often at all, so why don't we talk about something else?"

"Fine." Shun took a couple more bites of his slice of pumpkin pie and sniffed the air again. "Do you smell something?"

"The marinated turkey?"

"Not poultry. Something sweet."

"The cranberry sauce?"

"It's not fruit either. I smell flowers."

"My sachet?"

"Your what?"

Alice pulled a tiny, decorative cushion from her jacket pocket and showed it to Shun. "Just a small pouch of dried and preserved flowers inside. Smells like a variety of flowers, right?"

"That's...beautiful. What's inside?

"Petals from a variety of chrysanthemums and orange roses. A flower arrangement all in one. Look at the back."

She turned the sachet around for Shun to read the back. "'AG'? You made this? Can I have it?"

"No!" Just as Shun reached for the sachet, Alice backed away into her seat with her hand clenched tight. "This is the first thing I made ever since I took embroidery classes for leisure. Besides, if you had this with you everyday to think fo me, then there'd be no point in me coming back, wouldn't there?"

"Okay, I apologize. You didn't have to that technical. Next time, can you make another sachet for me and give it the next time you come by?"

Alice shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know when I'm coming back next time. I have a charity fundraiser to assist during Veteran's Day weekend, booked train tickets to visit Aunt Clara during **American **Thanksgiving in November, and scheduled tickets to see my grandfather for Christmas."

"I see."

"That's pretty much it." Alice put her sachet away and continued eating. "Have you found a girlfriend yet?"

Shun choked on his piece of pie and asked, "Why do you ask?"

"This place is getting a little messy..."

Alice had a point. Clothing laid all over the sofas, textbooks covered the coffee table, and plates piled up in the sinks. "I already told you how busy I am with my third year of college, but it's not like I can't take care of myself. Besides, I'm still waiting..."

"Waiting for?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Alice tilted her head again, and Shun shook his head. "Do you have a boyfriend?"

"Glad that you asked. I actually do."

"What?!" Shun choked on another piece of pie. "Uh...tell me more?"

"Well, he's about my age, still a college student, and..."

"Why does that sound like me?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Shun was taken aback by what Alice said afterwards but finally understood. Alice giggled and added, "That's why I asked if you had a girlfriend or not. Just making sure there was still a place for me."

"Well- I- That's a **very** rhetorical and redundant question...I mean statement." He covered his mouth to yawn . "Geez. Smelling that turkey even makes me sleepy at four in the afternoon, nevertheless **eating** it."

"Never underestimate the power of tryptophan, especially since **I** cooked the turkey."

"Despite all the biology classes I've taken, I still don't understand how tryptophan is—my animo acids labs! I totally forgot about them. Alice, clean the table, will you?"

As Shun rose from his seat to get his briefcase, Alice stretched out a hand and pulled his wrist. "Shun, why don't you take another nap? It's obvious you're really tired **not** because of the tryptophan."

"But labs are due-"

"Next Monday, right? You have the whole week to do that. Don't worry about it now." She dragged him over to the recliner seat he sat in earlier and forced him to sit down. "Relax. I'll take care of tonight's dinner, dishes, and whatever you haven't cleaned up."

"I guess I could-" Shun yawned again and rubbed his eyes. "Okay, you win."

"Told you." Alice walked over to the coat rack and took out a mini humidifier and plastic cube container with purple liquid from her bag. She plugged the the electronic into the outlet and the cube container into the humidifier. "I heard that lavender and chamomile scents help you get a good night's sleep. In your case, it'd be a good afternoon's sleep. Turning the switch on now."

Shun's eyes blinked heavily. "Yeah...whatever you say." Afterwards was a moment of silence in which Alice was busy gathering things into her bag. "Hey Alice."

"What?"

"Thanks for coming over."

Alice smiled sweetly and walked over to him. "No problem. I have to buy something real quick."

"Take your time."

"I will." She kissed him gently on his lips for a full second and then grabbed her stuff. "Sweet dreams."

**[~[~T~]~]**

Shun woke up at around six-thirty to another faint scent.

"Alice?"

No response.

He looked around the kitchen to see dirty dishes in the sink, the living room a mess, and **nothing** cooking in the oven. _I don't belive it. Was that all just a dream?_ He looked at his watch and was shocked to see the time. "Six thirty-eight? How long have I been sleeping?"

He tried to recall that 'dream' he had earlier. _I'm positive Alice was here. She even cooked turkey and pumpkin pie and showed me her sachet. We even talked about how our lives were going. How is this even possible? _Shun smelled a faint aroma of freshly baked pie travelling up from his open apartment window. _Must be my downstair neighbors cooking_.

_Wait. No one lives downstairs. It's the lobby._

What got him more interested in who was downstairs was the smell of dried flowers.

_I remember where that came from..._

Shun looked outside the window to see the doorman opening the door for a redhead to come inside. _Was I hallucinating?_ Shun walked over to his apartment door and opened it, surprised to see a certain person make their way upstairs so fast. "Alice!"

"Shun! Thanks for opening the door." She made her way inside with containers of stuff like this was **her** apartment. "Sorry for being late. The train ride and bus ride got delayed."

"Wait, what? Train? Bus? And how come you're"

"I'm what? Doesn't matter. Don't tell me you forgot that I was coming over. You called me every day just to remind me that I'm coming. Now I'm here."

"Yeah...you are." _I must be going through deja vu. There has to be a logical explanation for this._ Either way, he took a deep breath and help Alice unload her containers. "I didn't do a good job on the countdown, did I?"

"You only missed today. By the way," Alice reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a sachet. "This is a sample of the new line of autumn scents products and collection that my instructor taught me to make. My embroidery's not too bad, actually. I'm giving it to you."

"T-Thanks." On the back, it had the initials AG, just like in Shun's 'dream.' _Deja vu or not, at least Alice's here._ "Looks like your already baked your pie, but I don't see any turkey."

"Oh, that. I stopped by an old friend's bakery to cook this to eat first, but the turkey's in one of the containers you grabbed. Want to cook it together? I could use the help."

Shun smiled and grabbed the container labelled 'turkey'. "Why not?"

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**Sweet opening, sad near-ending, but happy ending/comeback: Positive and parabolic! X) Other than that, ****I honestly had no idea where I came up with a weird dream like that, but things happen. But I'm pretty sure everyone's had at least one moment of deja vu in their lives, right? Just at least one? It might not have been obvious, but everyone's different. ****I should really be working on Innocent Starter and Silent Bible. Lonely single-chapters just drifting out there. X(**

**Oh, and don't forget to review! :) Happy [Canadian] Thanksgiving! Be thankful for everything!**


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